The TEAM Episode Operator · for rural hospitals

We run the 30-day episode for you.

Cost down. Complexity down. Zero new hires.

CMS's TEAM model makes your hospital financially accountable for the entire 30-day surgical episode starting January 1, 2026. The cost isn't the surgery — it's the tail. We own the tail, on gain-share, without adding a single FTE.

Book a 30-minute episode-data review

No upfront fee · no new platform · if we don't reduce your episode cost, you don't pay.

01 · The problem TEAM creates

You keep billing fee-for-service — then get reconciled against a target price.

Starting January 1, 2026, TEAM (Transforming Episode Accountability Model) makes participating hospitals accountable for the full 30-day episode — surgery through post-discharge — across five surgical categories, including surgical hip/femur fracture and lower-extremity joint replacement. Spend less than target, you keep the difference. Spend more, you write CMS a check.

The cost is not the surgery. It is the tail: the SNF stay and the unplanned readmission in the 30 days after discharge — exactly what a resource-constrained hospital cannot manage with the staff it has.

For a hospital near a 3% operating margin, one bad quarter of hip-fracture readmissions is the difference between black and red.

The cruel part: most solutions pitched to you add work — new protocols, new IT integrations, new hires you can't fill.

02 · The one rule we build to
If it takes a new hire, it isn't a solution for you

We run the 30-day episode for you. You don't staff it, integrate it, or learn a new platform to make it work.

03 · What we do — the operator model

We're not software you have to run. We're the operator that runs the episode.

You keep your EHR, your staff, and your workflow. We sit on top of the discharge and own the tail.

04 · The margin math

Every dollar of post-acute spend below target is margin you keep.

The two biggest levers are SNF days and readmissions.

One avoided 30-day readmission
≈ $16,000

Mean Medicare readmission cost in hip/knee arthroplasty. Inpatient readmissions alone account for ~38% of total reimbursement in hip-fracture care.

One avoided extended SNF stay
$12k–$18k+

The single largest swing in the post-acute bundle — when a patient who'd have spent ~30 days in a SNF recovers at home with supported caregiving instead.

At a ~3% margin, protecting even a handful of episodes a quarter is the difference between a TEAM loss and a TEAM gain. You don't need to win every episode; you need to stop bleeding the expensive ones.

Illustrative figures — the model we run for you settles against your own CMS-set target prices, not these averages.

05 · Why this is built for rural

The thing that makes TEAM scary for a rural hospital is the thing we bring.

What makes TEAM frightening for a rural hospital is the lack of post-acute infrastructure — thin SNF capacity, home-health shortages — so you can't keep patients out of the settings TEAM penalizes. That capacity gap is exactly what we supply. Our community caregiver network and family-caregiver model are the at-home recovery capacity you don't have and can't hire.

06 · Pricing a 3%-margin hospital can say yes to
Gain-share, not a license

No upfront platform fee and no new FTEs. We take a share of the episode margin we protect against your target price. If we don't reduce your episode cost, you don't pay. Risk-aligned by design — the only model that works when your margin is 3%.

07 · How it works, start to finish

An eligible TEAM patient is identified at or before discharge.

We assume the 30-day relationship — home monitoring, caregiver support, recovery management, escalation.

The right patients go home instead of to a long SNF stay; readmission risks are caught early.

You see one per-episode view of spend versus target.

We settle on a share of the margin protected.

The ask

A 30-minute conversation and a look at your episode data.

We'll model, against your own target prices, the margin at stake — and what a realistic reduction in SNF days and readmissions is worth to you in year one of TEAM.

No obligation. We come to you — virtually or on-site. We'll bring the TEAM episode model; you bring your hip-fracture and joint-replacement target prices.

Received — thank you.

We'll be in touch to schedule the 30-minute review and the episode-data model against your target prices.

Sources

CMS TEAM Model — episode definitions, the 30-day window, the Jan 1 2026 start, and target-price reconciliation (cms.gov/priorities/innovation). Readmission cost ~$16,296 mean and readmissions ≈38% of hip-fracture reimbursement (NIH/PMC). SNF as the dominant post-acute cost (MedPAC SNF chapter). Figures are illustrative; final numbers depend on each hospital's CMS-set target prices.